


Just obeying orders

by Hypatia_66



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Vietnam War, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 14:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17510339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: Sent to Vietnam to investigate some defamatory reports about the American army, Napoleon and Illya come up against a wall of silence.Partly rewritten/re-edited, May 2019





	Just obeying orders

There was no problem about getting to the Pinkville battlefield from the airport – they took a flight in an army helicopter. Illya was surprised and a little shocked to find that he was sharing space with a consignment of ice cream.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” said Napoleon, “the guys deserve it.”

“It’s a funny way to conduct counterinsurgency – as if it were a beach holiday. Ice cream?” This was a very strange war. He thought the Vietcong might have been more easily defeated if the Americans had employed a strategy that had worked in Malaya where small units had been sent to live among the population.

He wondered aloud whether these rides into battle on helicopters and bombers were a waste of resources and whether they involved more deaths – particularly among Vietnamese villagers.

“Nick’s right,” said a soldier sitting beside them and overhearing these remarks – which had been, perforce, spoken loudly over the noise. Illya turned. “It’s not efficient or heroic to drop bombs on unarmed civilians,” the soldier said.

“Is that what we’re doing?” said Napoleon.

“Sure. The pilot here knows it’s not just bombs…” he was about to say more but one of his comrades kicked him and he fell silent.

Napoleon and Illya exchanged glances. Illya said, “You mean napalm? Agent Orange?”

The soldier muttered, “Yeah, that too.” But he would say no more, and the helicopter began to descend into a clearing full of men and equipment.

oo000oo

Travelling under false names – Illya as Nick Kaczynski, and Napoleon as Leo Soloway – they had accreditation papers from a news organisation. Like genuine journalists covering the war they were to send back news copy in the proper way and wear uniform in which, as former military men, they looked more convincing than most journalists did.

In the canteen, they sat with tired GIs, demoralised by the Tet Offensive and recent bomb attacks on their own position. The men talked freely, criticising their officers and grousing generally as soldiers do. Bound like brothers to their comrades, here and there a little hitch in the flow of conversation indicated the loss of a close friend. Some were clearly traumatised and sat dead-eyed and silent, others smouldered with barely-suppressed anger, eager to get out there and kill Vietcong, to get their own back on the murdering bastards who lived like animals – they _were_ animals.

Napoleon and Illya looked round when there was a slight stir caused by the entrance into the tent of a young lieutenant. They watched as he sat down with his meal at a neighbouring table, his red hair vivid, among a silent group of his men. Two of the company sat together slightly apart from the others, unspeaking and unspoken to.

“Who are they?” said Napoleon to one of the men at their table.

“Charlie Company.”

“Looks like they’ve had a hard time,” Napoleon commented. “What’s happened?”

“Just this goddam war.”

Even after a day or two among these men, they could feel anger, frustration and grief all around them. It was easy enough to write this up into a news report to fulfill the terms of their cover identities, but there was something in the atmosphere, in part fuelled by drugs, that hadn’t previously been publicly broadcast. They heard of the regular ‘accidents’ that men made jokes about: unpopular officers who had met an untimely end from a fragmentation grenade falling short – or even from one thrown into their tent. Fragging, the men called it.

But they also realised how much the conventions of war were being flouted the day a wagon carrying captive detainees for questioning rolled into the camp. It had seemingly become so much the norm to meet atrocity with atrocity, that the soldiers didn’t think of hiding their actions and, horrified, Illya and Napoleon found themselves watching marines throwing their prisoners from the top of the truck, bound hand and foot and unable to protect themselves. “What in God’s name do they think they’re doing?” cried Illya, jumping up. “Those are old people, and women and children!” He was about to go and remonstrate, when the GI standing beside him swung him round and loomed over him. “Just shut up. These people are all vermin. Leave them.”

If Napoleon hadn’t stopped him, Illya’s anger might have had them sent home early, possibly in a box. “Hey, hey, buddy. Calm down. Come away.” And he led him away from the scene and out of earshot.

“Nap… Leo. What are they doing! Maltreating innocent civilians! They’re making enemies of these people – don’t they realise?”

“Nick, they’ve lost friends. They’re angry – of course they want to fight back. The men hardly ever see the enemy – they’re too well hidden – so they fight whoever they _can_ see.”

“What? Old men, women, children? What kind of soldier fights _them_?” Illya stamped furiously. “Ice cream soldiers who get their comics delivered every week, that’s who!”

“Nick – these are kids, they’ve been thrown into an impossible situation. They’re damaged.”

Illya was contemptuous. “Are you defending the actions of these ‘kids’ as you call them?”

“No, of course not. I condemn them as much as you do. But I’m not living in this hellhole day after day.” Napoleon held up a placatory hand. “You saw terrible things in your war. Do you think it didn’t damage you?”

“Very likely it did, but not so much that I turn on the weak,” Illya snapped. “I don’t go heavy-handed into someone else’s country to destroy innocent people’s houses, or their crops; I don’t burn their fields and poison their water and their forests; I don’t beat them up or kill them. And nor do _you_.”

“This is what we’re here to observe and report on,” said Napoleon calmly. “We have to keep our objectives clear and not give way to emotion. Something worse has happened that they won’t talk to us about.”

Illya turned his head away and said, “I know. I tried to talk to that helicopter pilot but he just clammed up. I don’t think we are going to get anywhere.” He was sitting on a log, hunched and wretched. “We can’t even talk to the Vietnamese themselves – have you seen how they look at us?”

“Yes, I have. They hate us.”

“Yes, and why? Because these soldiers are being allowed to commit atrocities – making enemies instead of allies. It’s how they’ll ultimately bring about their own downfall – at the hands of enemies they didn’t need to have. What are their officers _doing_?”

“Il… Nick, calm down. Your anger isn’t going to win us friends either. We have to win the confidence of the ones who don’t like whatever it is that’s happened…”

<><><> 

Alexander Waverly invited his friend, under whose journalistic aegis his agents were working, to tea. He was disturbed by their reports. “Will you publish this?” he asked.

“I can’t, Alexander. No-one will believe it – they’ll see it as anti-war propaganda, defamatory to our brave men.”

Waverly, a soldier himself fifty years ago, who had seen how men behave in war, snorted.

<><><> 

It was becoming apparent that a shameful action, taken under orders from above, had badly affected some of the men. There had been a ripple effect throughout the camp as news spread.

“We have to obey orders,” said one marine Illya asked about the situation, who added the chilling comment: “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC. Simple as that.”

‘Just obeying orders’ had been the defence at the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg, but Illya chose not to remind him of it. It was too dangerous to antagonise already-traumatised men. The possibility that someone might toss a grenade into their tent was all too real.

<><><> 

“It looks reddish on the map. Is that why it's called Pinkville?” Napoleon was chatting to a young marine who seemed quite relaxed about talking to a journalist.

“It’s because Vietcong were being harboured in the villages… It’s actually called Song My – or was. The villages have practically gone.”

“Did you find the Vietcong hiding there?”

“We burnt them out.”

“What about the villagers?”

The soldier’s dead eyes turned to Napoleon’s. “Who cares? They’re all commies.”

“I just wondered where they go when their homes are destroyed.”

“Well, forget about it,” said the marine.

<><> 

Illya had found a young officer, the pilot of a reconnaissance helicopter, and tried to talk to him. He was an unhappy man. That wasn’t so unusual in this war, of course, but he and his two crewmen seemed to be shunned. He tried to get him to chat.

“Are you the first member of the military in your family?” he asked idly.

“My dad was in the last war,” the pilot said. “Navy.”

“Did he survive?”

“Yeah. He’s a proud father, sitting at home waiting for his heroic son to bring back a medal.” He looked down. “No chance, not after what I’ve seen.”

“He can still be proud.”

The pilot looked him in the eye. “You think so?”

“Why shouldn’t he be proud? What’s happened around here to make that so hard?”

“You don’t want to know… The women… babies…,” he whispered and hung his head. Illya waited. “We’re shamed by association...My dad should be ashamed… We shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t … it’s hell… Go away, willya. Leave me alone.”

<><><> 

The two agents compared notes. “There’s a bitterness and shame – I can’t account for it. It’s not just the ordinary horrors of combat.” said Illya.

“There isn’t any ordinary combat. They’ve had no chance to defend themselves against snipers, roadside bombs, booby traps, landmines – whatever. They haven’t seen their enemy close up.”

“That isn’t something to be ashamed of. If they haven’t seen an enemy soldier to fight, then who …? Ah Bozhe… that’s what he meant…” Illya stopped, suddenly stricken by a memory from the past he thought he had buried long ago. “Oh, no. Not that.”

“Not what?”

“They said they’d killed Vietcong.”  Illya said, then his tone sharpened. “Where did hundreds of people go when they set fire to those villages?”

Napoleon hadn’t grasped the point of his question and then his jaw dropped. “You don’t think…?”

“I do think. They’ve been taught to be killing machines so they act on orders to kill. No-one has ever told them that the Geneva Convention says you don’t have to obey an illegal order,” he said to Napoleon.

“Well, I don’t know why not,” Napoleon replied curtly. “I was told before being sent out to Korea.”

“Then they can’t have understood it.”

“If what you’re thinking is true, that’s a serious accusation – you don’t mean it, do you?” Napoleon had been a soldier; he knew how bad war was, but this… No, he didn’t want to believe it.

“You’ve seen how they behave around civilians in plain sight. What if it’s worse when there’s no-one to observe?” Illya continued.

“But it would be a war crime. Somebody would talk, surely?”

“Not if they want to feel safe among their comrades.” Illya stared at him pityingly. “You’re sometimes so ingenuous, my friend. Do you think heroes never commit war crimes, never order atrocities? You know your history, don’t you? Henry the Fifth is heroic in Shakespeare’s play, but it’s an historical fact that he massacred his prisoners of war. He said it was because he thought they would attack – just like here – but it was a war crime, even then. Such things have always happened.”

Napoleon bowed his head. But mass murder of unarmed civilians – innocents?

“This won’t have been the only such incident,” Illya said darkly. “Leadership here is lacking – the men are out of control.”

They were sitting silent, considering what to do next when a young aviation gunner approached them. “Guys?” he said. “Can I have a word?”

They looked up warily as he said, “One of the other aviators told me you’d been asking the same questions that I’m asking. Can we talk?”

<><><> 

“They won’t say anything to you because you’re journalists – outsiders,” the gunner said. “They’re beginning to talk to me, but it’s been hard getting evidence. Now I’ve seen photos.”

His description of what the men had said about mass rape and a massacre was sickening. Illya glanced at Napoleon who appeared to be speechless. “Will you publish what you’ve found?” he said.

“I’m gonna tell everyone what I’ve found, from the President down,” said the gunner firmly. “So, if necessary, I hope you’ll back me up at home? Mind, I think you should get out of here and go home before this goes much further.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” said Napoleon, a little miffed.

“No. You can’t. Not here, not with these men. And you don’t want to have to, so go now.”

<><> 

“Very well, Mr Kuryakin, I’ll expect your report as soon as you arrive.”

Waverly closed the line and sipped his tea thoughtfully. His news media friend might get a scoop, but it would be dynamite if badly handled. Better if UNCLE weren’t involved.

The flight back seemed even longer than the flight out. They couldn’t talk about what the gunner had told them for fear of being overheard, and there was nothing else that seemed worth saying, so they were mostly silent. Illya slept as usual, but Napoleon remained awake. He envied Illya’s detachment. He’d always said you couldn’t trust the state – _he_ had come to terms with the kind of betrayals a state and its agents can inflict. What had he said this time? Even heroes can commit war crimes, carry out atrocities. It had happened throughout history; it would happen again. It seemed there were no heroes, just men under stress, some of whom could rise above it and retain their humanity – and some who couldn’t. Was that just a matter of luck, or was it freewill? Were you born or did you choose good or evil?

He became aware that Illya was awake and watching him. “You don’t have to defend the indefensible, Napoleon,” he said softly, “every country discovers that some of the people who represent it are unworthy.”

“I’m ashamed, Illya.”

“Yes, of course you are. Shame and grief are the attributes of an honourable man. But let go. Try to sleep.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.”

“You will. It’s not up to you to pay the reckoning for the sins of others. I thought your religion taught that.”

Napoleon met the concern in the blue eyes with an unconvinced shrug, and closed his own.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t given the names of the real people caught up in this event. The individuals who carried out the Pinkville/My Lai massacre, the individuals who tried to stop it, and the individuals who reported it can all be read about online and in the history books, e.g. “Four hours in My Lai”, a documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwnnLnvQYA
> 
> Evidence of the massacre only became public the following year. The perpetrators escaped meaningful justice, but not their own consciences. Some apologised, some committed suicide.


End file.
